The propaganda by the Christian churches in regard to their
role during WWII in Fascist Italy, Yugoslavia, and Nazi Germany
has so conditioned their believers that most of them believe
that Christianity played an honorable role at best, and only
a silent role at worst. Yet there seems little recognition that
the very framework of the beliefs owned by the Fascists and Nazis
came from their Christian upbringing from church, school, and
Christian traditions. The entire anti-Jewish and racial sentiments
came not from some new philosophy or unique ideology, but rather
from centuries of Christian preaching against the Jews, gypsies,
and heretics. This comes especially true for European countries,
for the Christian practice of crusades, inquisitions and holy
wars occurred in their own backyards. Moreover, the wars conducted
by Providence, approved by God, appears so often in the Bible,
and practiced by Christians throughout the centuries has disciplined
Christians to believe that they could engage in offensive war
honorably and even worse-- morally. One must remember that the
Catholic raised and Protestant conditioned Hitler took his cause
of war for an expanded Germany and his fight against the Jews,
for Providence's sake, and a fight for the Lord. He appealed
to his fellow German Christians to put him in power and he achieved
popular support. I find it unimaginable that Hitler, without
this religious foundation, could have churches, politicians and
citizens electing him into office, much less have acted against
the Jews.

The intolerance against humans and religious wars committed
before WWII comes from such abundant sources of Christian history
that to deny an influential connection can only come from immeasurable
ignorance. Moreover the justification for atrocious acts committed
by Christians and priests during WWII could only have come from
their own beliefs and faiths.

I do not think I understate the claim that the conditions required for a
Nazi or Fascist state cannot occur without a deep religious or superstitious
underpinning. I charge that the major accountability for World War II and
the Jewish holocaust must go to the ones who created the conditions for it
to occur. And the people who created the conditions come in the form of the
Christian churches-- the body of believing people who acted according to their
Christian beliefs and who taught their children, preached to their congregations,
and influenced their society's political leaders.

I aim to provide the reader with a flavor of the forgotten
or denied role of Christians during WWII. Nothing here comes
from a unique or original understanding. Rather, I have taken
parts of what comes almost directly from established and well
researched historical works on the Catholic and Protestant involvement
in Europe.

The Catholic Church during WWII

Jewish persecutions: banning Jews from working for public
office, the enforcement of wearing yellow badges, the Jewish
ghettos, burning of synagogues, and the extermination of Jews
remind us of the atrocities committed by Nazis in WWII. However
the atrocities above do not pertain to Nazi actions but rather
the practices of Catholicism, centuries before Hitler came into
power.

The seeds of Christian hatred for Jews begins from the readings
of the New Testament and the persecutions began when the Church
first held power to enforce its dogmas. The Biblical Paul, for
example, put the blame of Jesus's death entirely on the Jews.
In the first epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians (2:14-15),
it says, "the Jews who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their
own prophets...." Also the gospel of John, makes it clear
that the Jews represent an enemy (and John 8:44 puts the devil
as the father of the Jews). Many prominent priests used Paul's
epistles and the gospels as Biblical justification for Jewish
persecution.

Historical Christianity makes it clear that the Jews formed
an essential part of early Christian theology. Examples include
the letter of Barnabas (circa 130), Justin the Martyr's "Dialogue
with the Jew Trypho" (circa 160), Tertullian's treatise
against the Jews (circa 200), Orgin's work against Celsus (circa
250). The sermons by John Chrysostom in 387, especially, show
an indigence against the Jews. Origen had written, "The
blood of Jesus falls not only on the Jews of that time, but on
all generations of Jews up to the end of the world." John
Chrysostom wrote, "The Synagogue is a brothel, a hiding
place for unclean beasts.... Never has any prayed to God....
They are possessed by demons." [Cornwell, pp. 24-25]

When Christianity became officially accepted for the state
in the 4th century, the Christians began to act against the Jews.
Constantine imposed heavy penalties on anyone who visited a pagan
temple or converted to Judaism. Mixed marriages between Jews
and Christians were punished by death. In the Codex Theodosianus
of Theodosis II (408-450), it forbade Jews to hold any public
office. It first came from Justinian who legalized the burning
and pillaging of Jewish synagogues by Christian bishops and monks
(often canonized later). Thomas Aquinas, in the treatise De
regimine Judaeorum ad Ducissam Brabantae, made it acceptable
for popes and kings to dispose of property belonging to the Jews.

Compelling Jews to wear yellow badges came from an invention
of the Catholic Church. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 set
up the Inquisition along with enforcement of Jews wearing a yellow
spot on their clothes and a horned cap (pileum cornutum)
to mark them as the murderers of Christ and to remind them of
their descent from the devil. During the Black Death plague which
ravaged Europe in the 14th century, the Catholic clergy aimed
its blame at the Jews claiming they worked for the Devil and
had poisoned the wells and springs. Their extermination compares
with the pogroms that took place in the 20th century under Hitler.
During the Spanish Inquisition, the Catholic Church directed
its actions against the baptized Jews, the marranos. They
forbade them to hold any office in the Church or the state; many
suffered torture or death.

Popes have traditionally supported anti-Jewish acts and beliefs.
Pope Paul IV in the sixteenth century established the Roman ghetto
(another Catholic invention). For more than two centuries afterward,
Catholics humiliated the Roman Jews and degraded them at the
annual carnival. In the same century, Pope Gregory XIII instituted
enforced Christian sermons insulting Judaism. [Cornwell, p. 299].
In a Papal custom Popes performed an anti-Jewish ceremony on
their way to the basilica of St. John Lateran. Here the Pontiff
would receive a copy of the Pentateuch from the hand of Rome's
rabbi. The Pope then returned the text upside down with twenty
pieces of gold, proclaiming that, while he respected the Law
of Moses, he disapproved of the hard hearts of the Jewish race.
[Cornwell, p. 27]

Forcing Jews, and heretics into the Catholic faith, of course
has always served as a hallmark of Catholicism. When they could
not legally use strong-arm tactics they used propaganda. Although
most people associate the term with Hitler, propaganda actually
came as an invention by the Catholics long before the Nazis,
from the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, an organization
established by Pope Gregory XV in 1622.

In the 1930s, as the Catholic leaders listened to Hitler's
rhetoric against the Jews during his appeal for power, his speeches
condemning Jews only correlated with the Church's own long history
of Jewish hatred. Indeed, in Hitler's meeting with Bishop Berning
and Monsignor Steinmann on April 26, 1933, Hilter reminded his
Catholic guests that the Church, for 1,500 years had regarded
the Jews as parasites, had banished them into ghettos, and had
forbidden Christians to work for them. Hitler said he merely
intended to do more effectively what the Church had attempted
to accomplish for so long. [Lewy]

It should come to no surprise that at no time before or during
Hitler's rise did the Catholic Church speak up against such talk.
Sadly the Church remained mostly silent, with its main objections
concerned with its own power structure in Germany. Thus it aimed
to prevent loss of control and, indeed, to gain Church control
through an expansion of papal power, control of appointment of
bishops, and the control of Catholic schools. This self-serving
interest gave the Vatican an impetus to form an agreement with
Germany. In this sense, Hitler actually saved Catholicism in
Germany, especially considering that Bismark before him had begun
a Kulturkampf ("culture struggle"), a policy
of persecution against Catholicism. [Cornwell, p.14]

The Reich Concordat between Hitler
and the Vatican:

In 1917, Eugenio Pacelli, later to become Pope Pius XII, resided
in a nunciature in Munich, directly opposite to what was later
to become the Brown House, the cradle of Nazism. There he showed
his first inkling of his unsympathetic feelings toward the Jews
when he refused to come to the assistance of Jews and calling
them a "Jewish cult." [Cornwell, p.70]. In a typewritten
letter, he described "a gang of young women, of dubious
appearance, Jews as like all the rest of them, hanging around
in the offices with lecherous demeanor and suggestive smiles."
[Cornwell, p.75] In the 1920s Pacelli presented his credentials
to the Weimer government where he stated, "For my part,
I will devote my entire strength to cultivating and strengthening
the relations between the Holy See and Germany." Pacelli's
stay in Germany with his familiarity with their political, religious,
and racist views must have influenced his later work to unify
Catholicism with Germany.

In Italy, the Holy See signed a pact (drafted by Pacelli's
brother and Pietro Gasparri) with Mussolini in February 1929,
known as the Lateran Treaty. Hitler had taken note of the Lateran
Treaty and hoped for an identical agreement for his future regime.
[Cornwell, pp.114-115] The Vatican encouraged priests to support
the Fascists and the Pope spoke of Mussolini as "a man sent
by Providence." The Church has a history of pacts with criminal
states as the Holy See signed treaties with monarchs and governments
regardless of slavery, inhumanity, or torture they may have induced
upon fellow human beings. Even Mussolini's attack on Ethiopia
on October 3, 1935 was not condemned by the Holy See. Nor did
Pius XI restrain the Italian hierarchy from war enthusiasm. "O
Duce!, declared the bishop of Terracina, "today Italy is
Fascist and the hearts of all Italians beat together with yours."
[Cornwell, p.175]

In the 1930s, Pacelli and his associates negotiated with the
Nazis to form a contract which got signed in 1933 as the Reich
Concordat with the approval of the Pope. Note that the Catholic
hierarchy believes in the infallibility of Popes in matters of
faith and morals (ever since the First Vatican Council of 1870).
This Concordat with its Papal infallible authority had arguably
neutralized the potential of 23 million Catholics to protest
and resist and which helped Hitler into legal dictatorship. [Cornwell,
p. 4] After the agreement, Hitler, mimicking Pacelli fourteen
years earlier stated, "I will devote my entire strength
to cultivating and strengthening the relations between the Holy
See and Germany." [Cornwell, p. 136] (Hitler, spent more
time and effort on the concordat with Pacelli than on any other
treaty in the entire era of the Third Reich [Cornwell, p. 150]).
This Concordat gave Germany an opportunity to create an area
of trust with the Church and gave significance to the developing
struggle against international Jewry. According to John Cornwell,
this papal endorsement of Nazism helped seal the fate of Europe
which makes it plausible that these Catholic prejudices bolstered
aspects of Nazi anti-Semitism. [Cornwell, p. 28]

The Concordat and the following Jewish persecutions resulted
in the silence of the Pope and the bishops. Cardinal Faulhaber
of Munich, referring to the Nazi attacks on the Jews, wrote to
Pacelli, confirming that protest proved pointless since it could
only extend the struggle to Catholics. He told Pacelli, "Jews
can help themselves." [Cornwell, p. 140] Most bishops and
Cardinals were Nazi sympathizers as were bishop Wilhelm Berning
of Osnabruck and Archbishop Grober of Freiburg (Pacelli's choice
for emissaries).

On April 25, thousands of Catholic priests across Germany
became part of an anti-Semitic attestation bureaucracy, supplying
details of blood purity through marriage and baptism registries
in accordance with the Nazi Nuremberg laws which distinguished
Jews from non-Jews. Catholic clerical compliance in the process
would continue throughout the period of the Nazi regime. [Cornwell,
pp.154] Any claimed saving of all-too-few Jewish lives by a few
brave Catholics must stand against the millions who died in the
death camps as an indirect result of the official workings of
the Catholic body.

After Kristallnacht (where Nazis broke Jewish store
windows and had synagogues burned) there issued not a single
word of condemnation from the Vatican, the German Church hierarchy,
or from Pacelli. Yet in an encyclical on anti-Semitism, titled
Humani generis unitas (The Unity of the Human Race) by Pope
Pius XI, a section claims that the Jews were responsible for
their own fate. God had chosen them to make way for Christ's
redemption but they denied him and killed him. And now, "Blinded
by their dream of worldly gain and material success," they
had deserved the "worldly and spiritual ruin" that
they had brought down upon themselves. [Cornwell, p. 191] Cardinal
Theodor Innitzer, archbishop of Vienna warmly received Hitler
in Vienna after his triumphal march through the capital where
he expressed public satisfaction with Hitler's regime. [Cornwell,
p. 201] Meanwhile, Cardinal Bertram sent Hitler an effusive telegram,
published on October 2 in the Nazi newspaper Volkischer Beobachter,
"The great deed of safeguarding peace among the nations
moves the German episcopate acting in the name of the Catholics
of all the German dioceses, respectfully to extend congratulations
and thanks and to order a festive ringing of bells on Sunday."
[Cornwell, p. 202]

After the death of Pius XI, the electoral procedure to elect
another pope had begun. The March 1939 election favored Pacelli
and four days later, Pacelli made it clear that he would handle
all German affairs personally. He proposed the following affirmation
of Hitler:

To the Illustrious Herr Adolf Hitler, Fuhrer and Chancellor
of the German Reich! Here at the beginning of Our Pontificate
We wish to assure you that We remain devoted to the spiritual
welfare of the German people entrusted to your leadership....
During the many years we spent in Germany, We did all in Our
power to establish harmonious relations between Church and State.
Now that the responsibilities of Our pastoral function have increased
Our opportunities, how much more ardently do We pray to reach
that goal. May the prosperity of the German people and their
progress in every domain come, with God's help, to fruition!

Pacelli became a crowned Pope on March 12, 1939 (Pius XII).
The following month on April 20, 1939, at Pacelli's express wish,
Archbishop Orsenigo, the nuncio in Berlin, opened a gala reception
for Hitler's fiftieth birthday. The birthday greetings thus initiated
by Pacelli immediately became a tradition; each April 20 during
the few years left to Hitler and his Reich, Cardinal Bertram
of Berlin would send "warmest congratulations to the Fuhrer
in the name of the bishops and the dioceses in Germany,"
to which he added "fervent prayers which the Catholics in
Germany are sending to heaven on their altars." [Cornwell,
p. 209] By this time Pacelli could call on the loyalty and devotion
of a half-billion people, of which half the populations of Hitler's
new Reich had become Catholics, including a quarter of the SS.
At this time bishops, clergy, religious, and faithful had bound
themselves to the Pope, and by his own self estimation, served
as the supreme arbiter of moral values on earth. [Cornwell, p.
215]

Throughout the war, not only did Catholic priests pay homage
to Hitler and contribute to the anti-Semitic feelings, several
priests also protected Nazis from criminal charges. For example,
Nazi sympathizers such as Bishop Alois Hudal helped Nazi criminals
escape to South America by assisting them with false papers and
hiding places in Rome. Father Dragonovic worked with the U.S.
Army's Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) to organize the escape
of the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie to South America. Barbie
had also lived under Dragonovic's protection in San Girolamo
for about a year.

Catholic Croatia's Atrocities:

In 1941 Croat Fascists declared an independent Croatia. Italy
and Hungary (also a fascist state) joined forces with Hitler
for a share of Yugoslavia. Hitler had issued his plan for a partitioned
Yugoslavia, granting "Aryan" status to an independent
Croatia under the Catholic Ante Pavelic. This resulted in a campaign
of terror and extermination conducted by the Ustashe of Croatia
against two million Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and Communists between
1941 and 1945 (Note that the Croats were Roman Catholics, the
Serbs were Orthodox Christians). According to Cornwell, "Pavelic's
onslaught against the Orthodox Serbs remains one of the most
appalling civilian massacres known to history."

From the outset, Pope Pius XII and the Vatican knew of the
racist and anti-Semitic statements made by the Croats even as
the Pope met with Pavelic and bestowed his papal blessing. Not
only did the Croatian Catholic clergy know the details of the
massacre of the Serbs and the virtual elimination of the Jews
and Gypsies but many of the priests took a leading role! Monks
and priests worked as executioners in hastily set up concentration
camps where they massacred Serbs. These killings had gotten so
brutal that even the Nazis protested against them. By the most
reliable reckoning, the Catholic fascists massacred 487,000 Orthodox
Serbs and 27,000 Gypsies between 1941 and 1945 in the independent
State of Croatia. In addition, approximately 30,000 of the 45,000
Jews died in the slaughter.

At no time did the Vatican make an attempt to halt the forced
conversions, appropriation of Orthodox property, or the mass
killings. Croat priests had not only sympathized with the fascist
massacres but took part in them. According to Cornwell, "Priests,
invariably Franciscans, took a leading part in the massacres.
Many went around routinely armed and performed their murderous
acts with zeal. A father Bozidar Bralow, known for the machine
gun that was his constant companion, was accused of performing
a dance around the bodies of 180 massacred Serbs at Alipasin-Most."
Individual Franciscans killed, set fire to homes, sacked villages,
and laid waste the Bosnian countryside at the head of Ustashe
bands. In September of 1941, an Italian reporter wrote of a Franciscan
he had witnessed south of Banja Luka urging on a band of Ustashe
with his crucifix." In the Foreign Ministry archive in Rome
there sits a photographic record of atrocities: of women with
breasts cut off, gouged eyes, genitals mutilated; and the instruments
of butchery: knives, axes, meat hooks. [Cornwell, pp. 253-254]
Not only priests, but even many nuns sympathized to the movement.
Some of these nuns marched in military parades behind soldiers with their arms
raised in the fascist salute.

From the very beginning the Catholic clergy worked in collaboration
with the Ustashe. Archbishop Stepinac got appointed spiritual
leader of the Ustashe by the Vatican in 1942. Stepinac, with
ten of his clergy held a place in the Ustashe parliament. Priests
served as police chiefs and officers of in the personal bodyguards
of Pavelic. There occurred frequent BBC broadcasts on Croatia
of which a February 16, 1942 typical report stated: "The
worst atrocities are being committed in the environs of the archbishop
of Zagreb [Stepinac]. The blood of brother is flowing in streams.
The Orthodox are being forcibly converted to Catholicism and
we do not hear the archbishop's voice preaching revolt. Instead
it is reported that he is taking part in Nazi and Fascist parades."
[Cornwell, p.256] The French cardinal Eugene Tisserant, a Slavonic
expert, told a Croat representative on March 6, 1942, "that
it is the Franciscans themselves, as for example Father Simic
of Knin, who have taken part in attacks against the Orthodox
populations so as to destroy the Orthodox Church in banja Luka...."
[Cornwell, p. 259]

Even though petitions against the Catholics and their massacres
got sent to Pius XII, not once did Pacelli, the "infallible"
Pope, ever show anything but benevolence toward the leaders of
the Pavelic regime. His silence on the matter matched his silence
about his knowledge of Auschwitz.

To this day, there occurs ethnic cleansing, outbreaks of war
and intense bitter feelings between Croats and Serbs. The religious
organizations in the area must bear the major responsibility
for these intolerances, atrocities and wars.

Yes there occurred some brave protests by priests and nuns
against Nazism and their Jewish attacks but they came few and
far between. For example, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
(a Jewish convert also known as Edith Stein) wrote a letter to
Pius XI begging him to "deplore the hatred, persecution,
and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews, at any
time and from any source." Her letter drew no response.
Faulhaber defended converted Jews, but not all Jews. Catholics
point to the canonized friar, Maximilian Kolbe, who voluntarily
took the place of another person in a concentration camp, but
conceal the point that he took the place of a gentile, not a
Jew; nor do we hear that he had served as editor of an antisemitic
Catholic journal. We also have bishops such as Jozsef Midszenty
of Hungary who openly condemned the Nazis after they invaded
his country.

We should, of course, always applaud individuals against oppression,
but the few protests cannot, by any standard, serve to absolve
Christianity, much less honor it.

The deploring fact remains: the major body of the Catholic
Church in Germany, that being popes, priests, nuns, and Catholic
lay-people supported Hitler and anti-Semitism. Catholicism had
links to government organizations, right-wing nationalism, including
Fascism and Nazism. Moreover, most every right-wing dictator
of the period had been brought up a Catholic: Hitler, Horthy,
Franco, Petain, Mussoline, Pavelic, and Tiso (who has served
as a Catholic priest). Catholic bishops and cardinals throughout
the war expressed anti-Semitic views even as the actions against
the visibly persecuted Jews increased. In 1936, for example,
Cardial Hlond, primate of Poland, opined: "There will be
the Jewish problem as long as the Jews remain." Cardinal
Maglione, even though he recognized the hellishness of Hitler,
justified himself with the private view that "Hitler and
all his diabolic works may be the process of the casting out
of the devil in the subconscious of the German race." [Cornwell,
p. 282] Slovak bishops issued a pastoral letter that repeated
the traditional accusations that the "Jews were deicides,"
and evidence exists that anti-Judaism occurred in the heart of
the Vatican. [Cornwell, p. 280] Pope Pius XII, his campaign of
silence and subterfuge, his fanatical urge to complete a Concordat
and to assist Hitler into legal dictatorship, shows his complicity
with the Nazi Government. And at no time did the bishop of Rome
make a single liturgical act for the deported Jews of Rome. Even
after the lost war for Germany and upon hearing of the death
of Adolf Hitler, Adolf Bertram, the cardinal archbishop of Berlin
ordered all the parish priests of his archdiocese "to hold
a solemn Requiem in memory of the Fuhrer and all those embers
of the Wehrmacht who have fallen in the struggle for our German
Fatherland, along with the sincerest prayers for Volk and Fatherland
and for the future of the Catholic Church in Germany." [Cornwell,
p. 317]

The followers of the Catholic Church, the common German Catholic
citizens also had ingrained into them a loyalty to the Church
and to Germany. Most of them held anti-Semitic views. Many of
the police battalions that formed execution squads came from
religious men. According to Goldhagen, "some of the men
who went to church, prayed to God, contemplated the eternal questions
and recited prayers which reminded them of their obligations
to other humans; the Catholics among them took communion and
went to confession. And when they went at night to their wives
and girlfriends, how many of the killers discussed their genocidal
activities?" [Goldhagen, pp.267-268].

The Protestant Churches
in Germany

Protestantism constituted the major religion in Germany during
the early 1930s. Until Hitler attempted to establish a German
Reich Church, there existed no such thing as an official German
Protestant Church. The Nazi party made a call for all German
Protestants to unite in the hour of national need [Holt, p.168-9].
The Christian Evangelical Church would receive the dignity due
it within a National Socialist State (Nazism) based on positive
Christianity ("Positive Christianity" was stated in
point twenty-four of the Nazi Programme, their version of a constitution),
and whom Martin Luther served as their spiritual patron.

Most German Protestants followed Luther (who they knew hated
Jews) and believed in the sanctity of the secular authority and
the supremacy of the authority over all religious organizations.
To Luther, the head of the temporal state should also be head
of "the church visible." [McGovern, p.650] On May 14,
1933, Ludwig Muller, a prominent member in the ranks of the German
Christian Movement became the principle Bishop of the Evangelical
German Reich Church.

Of course the thought of a state controlled national church
could mean loss of control by the pastors of the Church. Naturally
many pastors became concerned; some protested quietly to themselves
and others, openly, by forming the Confessing Church. Nevertheless,
most pastors allied themselves with the Nazi party and their
anti-Semitic views got published in the Protestant press even
before Hitler's election into power. The Protestant press influenced
millions of its readers with the most prominent being the Sonntagsblatter,
and the weekly Sunday newspapers. These weekly papers dwelled
on religious piety and preached how they thought of Jews as "the
natural enemies of the Christian-national tradition." [Goldhagen,
1996] As far as anyone knows, there had never occurred any visible
or vocal church protest against the anti-Semitism of the Nazi
party before it came into power. Considering that the majority
of Germans at that time held anti-Semitic feelings (no doubt
due mainly to religious preachings and propaganda), this should
not surprise anyone. As many have pointed out, the religious
rhetoric influenced Hitler during his youth.

Other pastors openly welcomed the Nazi's believing that the
reintroduction of government by Christian authorities, affirmed
St. Paul that "the power that be are ordained by God."
(Romans 13:1). Under the continuing influence of the Lutheran
Court Preacher Adolf Stocker, they believed that the future of
German Lutheranism lay in obliterating the Jewish background
of Christianity, and creating a national religion based on the
traditions of German Christianity. They repeatedly stressed Luther's
anti-Semitic statements.

One of the "moral" pastors of the nation, Bishop
Otto Dibelius, declared in a letter after April 1933, that he
has been "always an antisemite." Dibelius had expressed
that he wanted the Jews to die out peaceably, bloodlessly (what
a guy!) Wolfgang Gerlach, a German Evangelical pastor and historian
of the Christian churches during the Nazi period, observed Bishop
Dibelius' anti-Semitic sentiments as "well nigh representative
of German Christendom in the beginning of 1933. [Goldhagen, pp.108-9].

Bishop Martin Sasse of Thuringia, a leading Protestant churchman,
published a compendium of Martin Luther's anti-Semitic vitriol
shortly after Kristallnacht (the first openly public attacks
against the Jews by the Nazis). He applauded the burning of the
synagogues and the coincidence of the day: "On November
10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in
Germany... of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner
of his people against the Jews." [Goldhagen p.111] He also
edited a brochure for his ministers at the end of November 1938
titled, "Martin Luther and the Jews: do Away with Them!"
He quoted extensively from Luther's book "On the Jews and
their lies." [Wollenberg, p.73]

After the Nazi party took over, they began to exclude Jews
from jobs and schools and later to exclude baptized racial Jews
from the Land churches and to force them to live completely by
themselves. Notably, the churches deeply involved themselves
in furnishing data about racial origins from the very beginning
of the Nazi era. Even Bishop Wurm saw no harm in this, and in
1934 informed his clergy: "The use of the 'hereditary passports'
(Ahnenpasse) can also be recommended from the standpoint
of the church." [Helmreich, p. 328]

On September 1, 1941, a national law made it compulsory for
all Jews to display the Star of David when they appeared in public.
The ordinance presented a problem to the churches because they
did not know that many of the Christians in their congregations
had Jewish origins.

How did the Protestant churches respond to this oppression
of their fellow Christians? On December 17, 1941, Protestant
Evangelical Church leaders of Mecklenburg, Thuringia, Saxony,
Nassau-Hesse, Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Anhalt, and Lubeck
collectively issued an official proclamation:

From the crucifixion of Christ to the present day, the Jews
have fought Christianity or misused and falsified it in order
to reach their own selfish goals. By Christian baptism nothing
is altered in regard to a Jew's racial separateness, his national
being, and his biological nature. A German Evangelical church
has to care for and further the religious life of German fellow
countrymen; racial Jewish Christians have no place or rights
in it. [Helmreich, p. 329]

One must also remember that most of the German citizens held
beliefs as Protestant Christians. Many of the German police battalions
who executed Jews with anti-Jewish zeal got recruited straight
from the German populace, citizens that grew up in traditional
Christian homes. For example, the men of one Police Battalion
came predominantly from Hamburg and the surrounding region, an
overwhelmingly Evangelical Protestant area. And even those battalion
members who renounced the Church, declared themselves "gottglaubig,"
a Nazi term for having a proper religious attitude without being
a member of a traditional church [Goldhagen, p. 209].

In the end neither the official Protestant or Catholic churches
tried to stem the tide of anti-Semitic measure taken by the Nazis,
The Kirchliches Jahrbuch summarized it after the war:

The anti-Semitism of the NSDAP found the Evagelical church
unprepared. Indeed, at least the Confessing church resisted the
Aryan paragraph in the church and the separation of Jewish Christians
out of the Evangelical church of Germany, but against anti-Semitism
they uttered no word, and even at the time of the Jewish persecutions
and of their extermination it could not bring itself to stand
against the measures of the National Socialist regime both in
and without the church. [Helmreich, p. 332]

The Confessing Church

Inevitably, whenever one questions the role of Christianity
during WWII, Christians will quickly respond by providing examples
of heroic Catholics or Protestants who saved lives, protested
against Nazism, or had given their lives by dying in concentration
camps. What appears most puzzling by these defenses comes from
their complete lack of perspective of the history of their own
faith-system. Of course there lived a few brave Christian men
and women who opposed Nazism and performed courageous deeds.
But the key word here, "few," can hardly absolve the
whole. One can say the same of the few heroic Nazis who protested
against the atrocities committed by their own government. But
can we prop up these few as a banner, while ignoring the
majority of those who committed crimes to justify a belief-system
regardless if it comes from a political ideology or a
religion? If this served the case, then we could mine any intolerant
system for its "few" noble members as justification
for the system by calling it the True system, as do Christians
who love to use the term True Christianity as if this had any
definable meaning. Any honest reader should recognize that if
this ploy cannot work for support of Nazism, Communism, Islam,
(or any religion not your own) or any ideological belief-system,
then neither can it work for Christianity.

As for the Church's supposed role against Nazism, when the
focus gets narrowed as to just what Church opposed Hitler, sadly,
one can only point to a single minor opposing Church body: the
Confessing Church. Although one should always fairly honor any
heroic struggle against oppression of human freedom, the ethical
dilemma faced by the Confessing Church did not exactly meet the
demands for opposing anti-Semitism.

Hitler wanted to combine all the regional Protestant churches
into a single and united Reich Church. Of course this meant government
control of the Church and a minority of Lutheran Pastors foresaw
the dangers. In 1933, a few Protestant Pastors, namely Martin
Niemöller, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Karl Barth and others formed
the "Pastors Emergency League" which later became known
as "The Confessing Church" to oppose the state controlled
Nazi Church.

It bears some importance to understand that Germany did not
recognize the Confessing Church as an official Church. Not only
the Nazis, but all other Protestant Churches condemned the Confessing
Church. They thought of it as a minority opposition that held
little power. The vast majority of German churches supported
Hitler and his policies against the Jews. Moreover, they advocated
composing an "Aryan Paragraph" in church synods that
would prevent non-aryans from joining the Church, which of course
included Jews.

In spite of the myth that has developed that the Confessing
Church opposed Hitler for anti-Semitic reasons, the main reason
for the opposition actually aimed to protect the power of Pastors
to determine who should preach and who they can preach to. The
Barmen Declaration of Faith (by Karl Barth, et al) became the
principle statement of The Confessing Church. Not a single sentence
in it opposes anti-Semitism. According to Professor John S. Conway:
"The Confessing Church did not seek to espouse the cause
of the Jews as a whole, nor to criticize the secular legislation
directed against the German Jews and the Nazi racial philosophy."

Basically, the Confessing Church wanted to save themselves
from state control by forming what they considered themselves
as the "True Church" (don't all Christians think of
themselves as belonging to the True Church?). They did not want
government interference with Church self-regulation. This of
course deserves plaudits as history has shown that state controlled
religions have always ended in oppressing its people. The formation
of the United States with its secular government aimed at just
this kind of freedom of religion from the state. On this account,
the Confessing Church deserves honorable mention. However, just
what did they oppose about the Jewish question?

It turns out that the Pastors of the Confessing Church held
concerns only for Jews who converted to Christianity. Of course
they viewed Jews who converted to Christianity as Christian, not
Jewish. This Christian centered view gave them the reason for
their objection to the "Aryan Paragraph." For Jews
who did not convert, they held strong anti-Semitic feelings.
Remember that these pastors lived as well read Lutherans; any
reading of Martin Luther will reveal strong anti-Semetic feelings
toward Jews who did not convert (see, On
the Jews and their lies).

Although Martin Niemöller opposed the Nazi regime, he
concurred with the Nazi view in one foundational respect: the
Jews as eternally evil. In one of his sermons, he attacked the
Nazis (without naming them) by likening them to the Jews! [Niemöller
1937] Pastor Bonhoeffer, according to his beliefs, saw the Nazi
treatment against Jews as proof of God's curse on Jews. Shortly
after Hitler came to power, Bonhoeffer wrote to a theologian
friend that regarded the Jews "the most sensible people
have lost their heads and their entire Bible." [Goldhagen,
1996, p.109] To Bonhoeffer's credit, he did proclaim a credo
of non-violence, but this did not come from Christian theology.
Rather he based his non-violent stand from Mahatma Gandhi and
the humanistic movement (he claimed to be a disciple of Gandhi).
His neo-orthodox view opposed most every cardinal doctrine of
Christian faith to a point that some considered him an atheist.
Indeed he claimed it impossible to know the objective truth about
Christ's real nature and even claimed that "God was dead"
(Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Eberhard Bethge,
New York: Macmillan Co., 1972, pp. 9-12, 378; Ethics, pp. 38,
186; No Rusty Swords, pp. 44-45). Karl Barth, considered a great
theologian, and an opponent of the Nazis, and to his credit,
did oppose the persecution of Jews, had nevertheless, made us
quite clear of his own anti-Semitism. In his Advent sermon of
1933, he denounced the Jews, Luther style, as "an obstinate
and evil people." In a July 1944 Lecture in Zurich, Barth
said, "We do not like the Jews as a rule, it is therefore
not easy for us to apply to them as well the general love for
humankind..."

Richard Steigmann-Gall's research found that, "many confessional
Lutherans who would later join the Confessing Church received
the Nazi movement warmly." Otto Dibelius, General Superintendent
of the Kurmark, and one of the most conservative in the Confessing
Church, certified the Nazi movement as Christian: "The National
Socialists, as the strongest party of the right, have shown both
a firm, positive relationship to Christianity.... We may expect
that they will remain true to their principles in the new Reichstag."
After the Nazi Seizure of Power, Dibelius continued to view Nazism
this way, even to the point of excusing Nazi brutality [Steigmann-Gall].
At a 1933 service in Berlin's Nikolaikirche for the new Reichstag,
Dibelius announced: "We have learned from Martin Luther
that the church cannot get in the way of state power when it
does what it is called to do. Not even when [the state] becomes
hard and ruthless.... When the state carries out its office against
those who destroy the foundations of state order, above all against
those who destroy honor with vituperative and cruel words that
scorn faith and vilify death for the Fatherland, then [the state]
is ruling in God's name!" [Steigmann-Gall].

Unfortunately, several of the member of the Confessing Church
lost their lives in opposing Hitler. Bonhoeffer, for example,
joined with several high ranking Nazi officers in a plan to assassinate
Hitler. He also contacted foreigners to gain support for a call
to resistance. The Nazi's sentenced him for his opposition to
Hitler and his policies (not because of his Christianity as some
believers want us to believe). He died in the Flossenburg concentration
camp in 1945.

Nevertheless, even after the war, members of the Confessing
Church admitted their guilt. For example, Gerhard Kittle, a world-renowned
scholar of the New Testament confessed his political guilt
as he insisted that a "Christian anti-Judaism" which
he found in the New Testament and in the tradition of the Christian
church determined his attitude toward the Jewish question during
the Third Reich.[Wollenberg, p. 76] On March 1946, in a lecture
in Zurich, Martin Niemöller declared: "Christianity
in Germany bears a greater responsibility before God than the
National Socialists, the SS and the Gestapo." [Goldhagen,
p.114]

Considering that the Confessing Church with its few members,
represents the most active religious protest against Nazism in
Germany, it projects a poor commentary on the state of Christiandom
as a whole, even if the other churches had remained passive.
Unfortunately most Christian churches in Germany took an active
role, not only by accepting Nazism, but to support and strengthen
it.

Remaining secrets

The repulsive behavior of the Catholic hierarchy and the Protestant
leaders in Germany presented here gives only a glimpse of the
known atrocities and inhumane acts perpetrated through religious
beliefs. Much remains unknown; the uncovering of the terrible
history of Catholic and Protestant Germany during WWII continues.
The silence of Catholic and Protestants, church members, priests,
and nuns continues to this day. However, there occurs a few brave
researchers who dig to uncover the facts. As one example, Anja
Elizabeth Romus (best known in the U.S. from the fictionalized
movie, "The Nasty Girl [1990]") continues to research
and write about the priests who suppressed their anti-Semitic
role in Germany (Romus' first book: "A Case of Resistance
and Persecution, Passau 1933-1939," 1983). In her latest
book, "Wintergreen: suppressed Murders," she documents
the atrocities in her hometown [Passau] at the end of the war
including the slaying of 2,000 Soviet prisoners, the murder of
slave laborers' infants and the efforts to change memorials to
victims so that Nazi horrors would remain forgotten. Rosmus has
endured verbal abuse, death threats and lawsuits in response
to her dedication to the memories of those who faced Nazi persecution.

Recent evidence has surfaced that shows that both Germany's
Roman Catholic Church and Germany's Protestant Church used forced
laborers during the Third Reich. Religious affairs organizations
have attempted to get the Churches to pay into a compensation
fund for Nazi victims. According to Christa Nickels, religious
affairs spokeswoman for junior coalition government partners
the Greens, said the Church should immediately pay into the fund;
"The correct thing to do is for the Church to pay into the
fund. It's not about when, where and how many forced laborers
were used, but whether the two main churches were involved in
the system." [Reuters news, 20 July 2000]

How can one come to terms with such a powerful and oppressive
system that denies its involvements with crime? Priests and ministers
get held in high regard as they unconsciously hide their tracks
with "moral" platitudes and religious services that
seem to have nothing in common with past Church intolerances.
In the United States, Father Patrick Peyton in the 50s campaigned
at encouraging the recital of the Rosary in the home with the
famous slogan, "The family that prays together stays together"
and "A world at prayer is a world at peace." How in
the world can anyone justify such fake sentiments in light of
the fact that Christians have prayed for peace ever since Christianity's
invention without a single lasting result? The horrors of WWII
introduced by religious minds appear so obvious and dominate
that only some powerful agency could possibly conceal the obvious
facts from so many people for so long a time. That agency, indeed,
does exist and it confronts every conscious believing human being
at every waking hour: the power of Faith, that hideous instrument
of counterfeit reality that can convince even the most educated
human.

One should also keep in mind that the sheep of Christ, the
blind followers of Christian leaders, no matter how grievous
their sins or the sins of their pastors and priests, could rest
in assured comfort that they lived as a part of the people of
God. This religious system excluded anyone who refused to pay
allegiance to Popes and ministers.

The questioned cry of "How could these atrocities have
happen?" could only come from a religious mind overwhelmed
by falsification or who must live in a state of denial against
the abundant facts of history to protect a religious illusion.
The Nazi atrocities did not come from a mad leader (a common
excuse) or from a superstitious Satan, or from the mysterious
workings of God-- they occurred from common people acting from
their beliefs. The question has an obvious answer and
it sits staring at us in the face for anyone who dares look.

Today the Catholic Church has undertaken a campaign of suppression
and propaganda to belittle Cornwell, Goldhagen, Romus or any
researcher that dares to uncover the reality of the atrocities
committed by Roman Catholic Christians. Today, Protestant leaders
rarely mention the influence by Martin Luther and his anti-Jewish
sentiments taught throughout Germany. Indeed, most Protestants
live completely unaware of the hatred and intolerances spread
by their congressional ancestors. Instead of releasing documents
and admitting to the crimes of their fellow Christians, they
have opted to protect their religious power structures by silence,
concealment, suppression, and projecting the story of persecutions
committed against their own religion by other ideological systems,
a ploy that disguises their own complicity of persecutions heaped
upon others.

Catholics and Protestants might protest against revealing
the reality of Church involvement by claiming a trampling on
the sensibilities of the religious people between Church and
the modern effort to form some sort of conciliation between Christians
and Jews. However this tactic only distances themselves from
the recognition of the very problem that created the problem
in the first place. The seeds of intolerance sits firmly in the
place where it has always been-- in the "sacred" scriptures
and in the minds of believers who read them and act upon its
words.

Note, some nefarious web site
operators, like those from "jews-for-allah," for example, have copied
this web page without permission and removed all references to its source. Needless
to say, this kind of practice reflects the very questionable nature of their
morals and belief system. NoBeliefs.com does not condone or authorize these
web sites in any manner. Nor does NoBeliefs.com condone or authorize this material
for use on other religious, racist, or Neo-Nazi web sites. On the other hand,
those who ask permission and include a citation or link to NoBeliefs as the
originator of this compilation, have full welcome to use it.Return to Hitler index